All posts tagged iPad

A billboard displayed on one of this Swiss town’s main thoroughfares succinctly encapsulates the hope and the challenges posed by rapid technological change and globalization — both mainstays of the World Economic Forum’s debate here in snow-blanketed Davos. Part of India’s bid to promote itself as a technological powerhouse during the forum, it shows a woman in what looks like an Indian university holding a tablet computer with a $35 price tag. Less than two years after Apple Inc. released its phenomenally successful iPad tablet, Montreal’s Datawind LLC has made a competing Aakash Ubislate unit for the Indian market with a retail price that’s less than a tenth of what the cheapest iPad sells for in the U.S. If it takes off, this will make the convenience and power of tablet computing accessible for millions of aspiring members of the Indian middle class, people who should themselves then be able use this technology to further become more productive and innovative. But the cost and wage base needed to achieve such price points also puts intense competitive pressure on Apple, Samsung and other tablet producers, as well as on their employees. Notwithstanding rumors that Aakash’s Ubislate tablet could be shelved because of some early glitches, the message from the Indian billboard is: we live in an age when the time lag between which technology goes from being available for well-to-do “first adopters” to being mass marketed to lower-income consumers has rapidly shrunk. [Read more over the jump]

Green is in at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

As participants register and are handed their black conference bags emblazoned with the immodest slogan “Committed to Improving the State of the World,” they are asked if they want to go paperless.

That means eschewing the looseleaf binder that holds the details of the multiday program and the small but thick books of “members and “constituents” in favor of a small flash drive.

An organization spokesman said it’s too early to tell the take-up on the digital offer, but that given the effort to go paperless and such things as iPad applications containing the voluminous documents, there definitely will be less paper used this year than last at the yearly global get-together.

About Davos Live

Davos Live provides updates from the World Economic Forum’s annual talkfest in Davos, Switzerland, which draws more than 2,500 business, political and academic leaders for a five-day program of workshops and panel discussions. A team of reporters and editors from The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires is on the scene, and will be posting news, commentary and gossip as the conference unfolds.